Jacob Ogles
A new poll from Cygnal shows strong support for a ban on social media for minors.
Survey results released Monday by Cygnal show support across the political spectrum for a proposal to block anyone under age 16 from keeping or maintaining social media accounts. The poll found more than 67% of voters favor the legislation (HB 1).
The support for the bill was highest among Republicans, with 79% supporting the legislation. But 64% of independents and 57% of Democrats also favor the bill.
Moreover, the poll found support to be intense, with 47% of voters saying they strongly support the policy proposal.
Among parents, pollsters found 69% support, and 51% strong support, for the bill.
The poll was conducted for the political committee Florida Right Direction. Pollsters surveyed 800 likely General Election voters and reported a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
“HB 1 has a wide range of support with conservatives strongly backing the bill, while Democrats and Independents also consistently support it throughout the informed messages series of positions for and against the legislation,” said Brent Buchanan, pollster and president at Cygnal.
The survey informed voters that the House passed a bill that “would require social media companies to prohibit children under the age of 16 from creating social media accounts and to terminate existing accounts for children under 16.” The House passed such a bill in January and the Senate is ready to consider it on the floor this week. The bill has been a priority for House Speaker Paul Renner.
At the foundation of that opinion appears to be a widely felt belief children use social media too often. About 91% of all voters feel children are on social media too much, compared to 82% who feel the same about adults. About 90% of parents feel that way about child social media use.
“This is a problem that Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters can all agree on,” Buchanan wrote in a polling memo.
Pollsters also tested how various messaging both in favor and against the bill impacted public opinion, including that social media hurts kids and that the bill could trample on parental rights.
The most effective criticism of the bill appeared to be that it trampled on free speech. Almost 29% of voters said they were less likely to support the bill after hearing that argument, though more than 15% said they felt more supportive, and almost 30% said it made no difference to them.
As for arguments for the policy, messaging that social media causes real harm to children resonated with voters. Explaining that social media hurts minors’ mental health made almost 61% of voters more supportive of the bill. Hearing that it causes girls to feel hopeless, and even suicidal, had a similar impact on voters’ feelings on the policy.
Florida Right Direction HB1 Polling Memo_final by Jacob Ogles on Scribd
7 comments
Dont Say FLA
February 19, 2024 at 2:06 pm
Maybe I’m old but how do kids use social media without an electronic contraption their parents bought for them to do that with?
Michael K
February 19, 2024 at 9:19 pm
There were lots of studies and concern about the effects of television violence on young people in the 1960s. I think with every new technology there’s a backlash – and/or interest in studying possible effects, especially on young people. Not sure how content regulation could work with social media though totalitarian regimes seem to have devised methods to block access.
Duh
February 19, 2024 at 3:35 pm
The mega rich. their greed has no limit. Like Bezos. It doesn’t matter if he’s got billions, he wants you to pay more and more and more and more on Amazon Prime, so he can buy more private jets and yachts. Ditto social media billionaires. They don’t care if children are being harmed on their social networks. Are you kidding. They just want more and more and more and more and more money, at any expense, even if it means sacrificing the minds, souls, bodies and hearts of American children. They don’t care. When will you learn?
florida is Breaking Bad not set in a dry area
February 19, 2024 at 3:56 pm
Related: Florida has outlawed cocaine and fentanyl, so that’s solved!
Michael K
February 19, 2024 at 8:12 pm
Consider the source. Signal is a right-wing pollster who looks to Hungary as a model. So this is what a far right-wing republican pollster has to say.
But 82% of respondents also think adults are on social media too much – and social media is such a broad term.
Something doesn’t smell right here.
Tom
February 20, 2024 at 7:49 am
Near as I can tell, this addendum to the bill would include pretty much every website on earth. It’s very vague and fairly stupid like most of the legislation they spit out.
“Allows an account holder to interact with or track other account holders
Utilizes addictive, harmful, or deceptive design features, or any other feature that is designed to cause an account holder to have an excessive or compulsive need to use or engage with the social media platform
Allows the utilization of information derived from the social media platform’s tracking of the activity of an account holder to control or target at least part of the content offered to the account holder”
Dr. Franklin Waters
February 19, 2024 at 9:07 pm
Once you explain to the dum-dum’s that in order to ban kids under 16 from using social media you would need to confirm ID from everybody else in order to use it I would imagine support would plummet.
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